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cognitive skills. The argument here rests on the assumption that the child when entering school must learn standard English which, because of its presumed stronger structure compared to nonstandard English, provides for greater capacity in thinking and reasoning. The methods for remediation of these deficiencies, whether implicitly or explicitly stated, involve changing the language of the child to facilitate his adaptation to the educational environment. Baratz (1968), Weber (1968), and Carroll (1972) have taken issue with 92 Review of Research in Education, 2 the deficit hypothesis, arguing that a difference is not to be viewed as a def­ icit, since standard usage is relative to social acceptability and not an absolute standard. Linguistically, nonstandard English is as well developed, as structured, and as grammatical as any other language. The kinds of grammatical differences between it and standard English are no more in­ dicative of defects in communication potential than are the differences in grammatical structure between standard English and languages like French, German, or Russian. Neither language competence nor degree of cognitive ability is questioned by investigators taking the difference position. Rather, the child who uses nonstandard English upon entering school is said to be subjected to the requirement of learning a second or quasi-foreign lan­ guage. Investigators taking the difference position realistically point to neglect­ ful interpretations of the data on which the deficit position is based. In par­ ticular, Labov (1970), a linguist, has demonstrated that the typical assess­ ment situation places the user of nonstandard English in a position subordi­ nate to the authority of the examiner. The result is an inhibition of verbal output, erroneously interpreted as a deficiency. When the power difference is minimized, the child displays fully developed linguistic patterns. Other features of the testing situation may jeopardize the performance of the user of nonstandard English. Disadvantaged black children, assessed on standard English sentences, performed more poorly than did lower class children as a whole; when they were assessed on nonstandard English sen­ tences, however, their performance was significantly improved (J. C. Baratz, 1969). Few studies have made appropriate controls of such assess­ ment procedures (Baratz & Baratz, 1970; J. C. Baratz, 1969). Proponents of the deficit position have failed to consider cultural biases associated with the use of such standardized tests as the Templin-Dαrley Articulation Test and the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Ability when used with children from different subcultures. (For example, see Gerber and Hertel, 1969; Garvey and McFarlane, 1970; and comments on Gerber and Hertel by Holland, 1970.) In general, it must be concluded that the apparent poor performance of children who use nonstandard English is a reflection of situational (testing) constraints and the demands of a particular language, rather than an indication of linguistic capabilities. New methodology is needed for experimental studies in this area. An in­ novative use of the Berko (1958) task by Marwit, Marwit, and Boswell (1972) appears to hold promise for application of similar procedures to in­ vestigations of language patterns used by different cultural groups. The child’s (second-grade) task was to derive present, plural, possessive, and time-extension forms of a nonsense syllable. The response of white children contained more standard English forms, while black children supplied more nonstandard English forms in all but present-tense tasks. The findDi Vesta and Palermo: Language Development 93 ings indicate that black nonstandard English is a quasi-foreign language. Thus, Marwit et al. provide some additional experimental evidence that nonstandard black language is a highly structured, consistent language governed by regular grammatical rules which differ from those used by the middle-class American, rather than merely a “sloppy” version of it. (For further references, see Dillard, 1972, and Williams, 1970a.) From an educational view, the difference position implies that nonstandard language may indeed jeopardize the child’s ability to benefit from school experience, since he must cope simultaneously with new intellectual challenges at the same time he must acquire another language form. However, from the difference view it is the responsibility of education to accommodate these differences in the school’s curriculum so that the pupil learns first through his own language system (Baratz & Shuy, 1969). Subsequent instruction might be directed toward teaching the pupil the standard form without the risk of rejecting loyalty to his own language, self-incrimination because of the language he uses, or negative evaluation from others because he employs a nonstandard language form. Out of such instructional systems may eventually emerge still another bicultural model which provides for dual socialization simultaneously in the mainstream culture and in the subculture (Valentine, 1971). The magnitude of the issue involved in the deficit-difference clash is documented by the appearance of two edited volumes (Williams, 1970a; Shuy, 1971) devoted largely to a discussion of these models. Despite the impressive array of scholars and arguments presented on both sides of this issue, there is little empirical evidence based on investigations which directly compare predictions from the two models or directly test the deficiency-difference issue as alternative hypotheses (Williams, 1970b). Language Skills and Reading Early reviews of research in reading were made by Chall (1967), Harris (1969), Harris, Otto, and Barrett (1969), and Weintraub, Robinson, and Smith (1970). A major interdisciplinary effort in research on reading was launched through the U.S. Office of Education Project Literacy (Levin, Gibson, & Gibson, 1968). An effort to summarize the extant literature on reading and its related areas, produced under the editorship of Davis, is entitled The Literature of Research in Reading with Emphasis on Models (Davis, 1971). The volume reviews approximately 850 of the most significant of the 8000 articles on reading published since 1884 which can be found in the annotated ERIC/CRIER master file. In addition, there are descriptions of 77 models related to reading, one series of which is based on language development. This effort truly suggests a field in search of a model, sufficiently so to overwhelm and beguile even the most sophisticated scholar. Unfortunately, 94 Review of Research in Education, 2 the models presented are often little more than abstractions of existing theories in linguistics, information processing, cognitive psychology, reinforcement theory, and perception. Attempts to integrate these models appear as strained extrapolations from psychological theories to the reading process. In sharp contrast to traditional theories related to teaching the mechanics of reading (e.g., alphabet learning, phonics, decoding letters into sounds and serial processing of letters into words and words into sentences) is the current emphasis on studies of reading as they bear on an understanding of cognitive processes. These new developments have undoubtedly been responsible for the republication of Huey’s 1908 work, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, in 1968 and Thorndike’s (1917) article “Reading as Reasoning.” F. Smith’s (1971) Understanding Reading is a modern version of a similar view based on psycholinguistic analyses of reading. Among the most recent attempts to relate linguistics and psycholinguistics to reading (as well as visual perception, speech perception, and information processing) are two edited volumes. In one (Levin & Williams, 1970) many, though not all, of the studies reported are outgrowths of Project Literacy. The other volume, edited by Kavanagh and Mattingly (1972) is based on a research conference on the relationships between speech and learning to read sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In the main, a theory of reading based on developmental psycholinguistics would be constructed around reading as a skill in which thought processes and language interact. Work on such a theory has been carried on by a number of researchers. For example, Hochberg (1970) speculates that information picked up in peripheral vision during reading guides eye movements (peripheral search guidance, or PSG) in accordance with the reader’s hypotheses about information that must be obtained from the reading material (cognitive search guidance, or CSG). Schlesinger (1966) has used the eye-voice span as an indicator of comprehension and thus as a reflection of information processing. Brown (1970) comments that normal errors can be seen as related to progression in the reader’s knowledge of the grammar. Goodman (1970) has shown that even the very young reader can benefit from reading materials that effectively provide contextual, semantic, and syntactical information rather than the somewhat trite expressiveness characteristically employed in preprimers devoted to building word recognition. Thorndike, in a very early article (1917), and more recently Goodman (1969), Clay (1968), Weber (1970), and Brown (1970), in independent papers, have noted that errors in reading are due more to the reader’s knowledge of language, the way he processes the material, and the context provided in the written material than they are to sloppy habits, carelessness, and the like. Reading efficiency has been found to be faciliDi Vesta and Palermo: Language Development 95 tated by language patterns with which the reader is most familiar (Tatham, 1970; Levin & Wanat, 1967). As a final example, the research emphasis has replaced the role of the printed page with the role of the reader; serial processing of letters, sounds, and words has been replaced with parallel processing bas